West Space Commission

The West Space Commission is an investment in artists, supporting the development, presentation, and communication of ambitious new work in our gallery in Yálla-birr-ang (Collingwood).

The program is a supportive space for experimentation and building sector connections. Through writing and discursive programs, each commission is shared across the continent and beyond with our ever-growing audiences as well as sector peers and professionals.

Applications to the 2028 West Space Commission will open later this year. Read on about applying.

2027 West Space Commissions

West Space is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2027 West Space Commission, Jasmine Miikika Craciun (NSW) and Amalia Lindo (Vic).

Selected through a competitive nation-wide open call, each artist has each begun mentorship with our team as they look towards 2027.

Jasmine Miikika Craciun

Jasmine Miikika Craciun is a multidisciplinary artist in Sydney. Her practice celebrates ancestral resilience rooted in her Barkindji, Malyangapa, Romanian, and Austrian background. As an Aboriginal woman and second-generation “Australian,” Craciun is exploring the relationship between personal narratives and broader historical contexts, and the way in which histories of migration, colonisation, and belonging shape not only individual lives but collective memory, identity and intergenerational love.

Read on about Jasmine Miikika Craciun.

Amalia Lindo

Amalia Lindo is an artist in Naarm (Melbourne) of Hispanic-American ancestry who immigrated from Harare, Zimbabwe in 2005. Across video, sculpture, installation, and drawing, Lindo explores the complex interplay between humans and technology. Driven by experimentation and collaboration across scientific, creative, and digital labour contexts, Lindo examines the social and environmental impacts of technological production, with a focus on the hidden supply chains that drive emerging technologies through the extraction of data, human labour, and natural resources.

Read on about Amalia Lindo.

2026 West Space Commissions

daisy

daisy is an artist and writer based on the lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung people. daisy embraces the humour and humility of survival and belonging in a schismatic deep-fake post-truth context.

daisy's expanded practice fuses noise, data, installation and performance in response to the systemic effects and psychopolitics of global conditioning. While critically charged with ecosocial interruption, their work offers sustainable and spirited challenges to the depravities of discipline and the complacent carceral logistics of contemporary art. Their project opens in October, 2026.

“daisy's practice is evocative and well realised. Their investigations are timely, given the ongoing crisis of Aboriginal deaths in custody and the high incarceration rates of Aboriginal people. We are proud to work with daisy and introduce their work to our community.” — Jahkarli Romanis, West Space Board

Wassila Abboud

Wassila Abboud is a researcher and writer based between Amsterdam, Beirut, and Sydney. With a background in journalism, her research examines the material and metaphysical conditions of past, present historical struggles, and what emerges within these moments of transformation. Through intergenerational archives, essays, and film, Abboud explores the limits of imagination in moments of rupture. Her project will be presented in 2027.

“Wassila Abboud’s compelling practice contains both the urgency of our current political climate and the weight of generations of occupation, resistance and revolutionary struggle. Her archival research project at West Space will revive a series of 20th Century revolutionary texts with both public and personal resonances, linking Arab/Levantine diaspora across continents and generations.” — Sarah Poulgrain, West Space Artist Committee

2025 West Space Commissions

Tina Stefanou

Tina Stefanou: Motet Fail takes the backgammon board as a starting point, transforming West Space into a site for reflection, encounter and concert. Through a series of material, embodied, vocal gestures, and acoustic gatherings, Motet Fail asks how we meet one another, and what we risk in the process.

“West Space is fundamental to Naarm’s complex arts ecology. West Space is not supports artists — it is a critical force in reshaping the conversation around what a gallery can be, to whom it belongs, and its potential to facilitate spaces of critical experimentation.” — Tina Stefanou

Katie West

Katie West: Rockpools dwells with the stories of three generations of West's grandmothers – Wuggi, Sheila and Shirley – and the entanglement of their lives and legacies with colonial expansion in the Pilbara region of Western Australia.

"The West Space Commission ensured work was meaningfully received by my peers. West Space engaged Fayen d'Evie to write an essay and curator Michael Gentle to lead an in-person conversation with me, with the transcript also published online. These documents are vital to my ongoing ability to share of this body of work and my practice." — Katie West

2024 West Space Commissions

Akil Ahamat: Extinguishing Hope articulates the aesthetics and psychosocial affect of always and ever-unfolding disaster, drawing from big and small screen cinematic languages to produce a non-narrative atmosphere Akil describes as ‘slow cinema for short attention spans.’

“There are few opportunities in Australia that offer artists the ability to transition out of the emerging phase of their career by creating a significant body of work with long development time, curatorial support and considered programming.

West Space produced a publication contextualising my work in rich and meaningful ways, and significantly, the exhibition toured to UTS Sydney. The opportunity instilled a faith in the possibility of having a sustainable practice and to be able to build towards something greater. Reflecting on my practice with West Space has helped me identify elements of my artmaking process to work on that will carry my practice beyond this project and into the future.” — Akil Ahamat

Gabi Briggs

Nurturing the legacy of her late nan Patsy Cohen’s research, Gabi Briggs: ARKAN & IRBELA transforms the gallery into a location for the two women to dialogue across time and space, film and print publishing.

"ARKAN & IRBELA was a complicated project to conceptualise, and I am grateful to West Space for helping me discern how to communicate the deep and complex cultural meaning to audiences.

Throughout the development of this project, West Space remained respectful and flexible to my wishes and creative decisions. They introduced me to mentors D Harding, Julie Gough, and Tristen Harwood to help shape the trajectory of my research. Discussions and workshops allowed me to share my research with First Nations communities both in Melbourne and on Anaiwan Country — the place this commission connects to.” — Gabi Briggs

2023 West Space Commissions

HOSSEI

HOSSEI: THUNDERBLOOM is a three-channel installation presenting an album of songs that centre his mother, Nahid. The songs recalibrate the relationship between mother and son, from one that privileges a hierarchy of responsibility, to one of collaborative exploration, curiosity, imagination and discovery.

“With West Space, it’s never just a show — it’s a relationship. One that continues to grow, hold, and champion practice for the long run.

West Space gave me the freedom to be ambitious, vulnerable, and experimental. West Space hold deep trust in artists and commitment to supporting every step of the way, and long after the show is over. Their care and belief in work that’s risky, tender, or comes from the margins doesn’t just enable the work — it transforms it. It transforms careers." — HOSSEI

Grace Culley

Realised through her experience of Tourette’s Syndrome, Grace Culley: Surprised face; heart eyes presents a dopamine-centric view of the world, to explore the nuanced ways in which the ‘surprise reward’ chemical exists within the body, and how this manifests in broader social patterns.

“At a time when modes of traditional learning and knowledge are being questioned, the West Space commission could not be more vital to the arts industry and community at-large. The freedom and structure that the team provided me with allowed me to grow in ways that have greatly suited the ways my mind and body works.” — Grace Culley